Again, THANK YOU for your donations. We have been able to acquire the license/software for the upgrade of vBulletin. A test machine/server has been setup, the NEW software installed, the backup of the Forum databases installed, and it appears to be working well. We will be doing some more testing and tweaking of the test install for possibly another week or so to ensure it's working right before performing the actual upgrade/install on the real server.
SO...if you try to go to the Forums and get the closed for repairs message, that's what's happening.

The monthly hosting fees are ~$50.00, but due to the site being broken, lack of ability of new members to easily join, use the site, etc., these past couple of years is most likely why the donations had dwindled and JP was paying out of pocket to keep it open. Because of increased operational costs compared to 15 years ago, we will probably have a few banners from motorcycle type commercial sites to assist in generating some of the revenue to help keep the site up and running, but will probably still rely on the graciousness of members(long time and new ones that have found the site useful) to donate a few bucks as well.

Now a little technical info for the Geeks out there. We are running vB 3.7.3. vB is up to version 5.4.5 or such, but a lot of talk out there is that version 5# is a bit more bothersome with it's requirements and all. Our test machine has vB version 4.2.5 with PHP ver. 6.3.38 or such and is very stable. Our new license will allow us to upgrade to vB 5# in the future if the need arises without any additional cost, due to hardware/php code changes and any other compatability issues that may occur. So..just wanted to mention that for those that may check out the new site and realize that we weren't running the latest vB version available. Just think back to how "WELL" windows 8 worked compared to 7 when it came out! The latest version isn't always better!

(snip)JP informed me that it costs $1,000 a year to just cover the hosting fees for the site, and that's WITHOUT on site photo hosting, (snip)

What hosting service is being used here? I run a few sites for several different things and NONE of them are 1k on their own... Just concerned that JP might be paying WAYY too much for the plan we have.

I hope there will be a solution to the photo hosting problem we have here, the way it works now is a big deterrent for people who want to post pictures which are vital for technical repairs and such. Can't there be one premium Photobucket account to hold all the photos? May as well fix the site's problems completely instead of just a partial fix. Many of our members have been lost to Facebook, ugh.

Bikerphil,
I totally agree we need pictures for the Technical discussions.
Ride reports are greatly enhanced with pictures too.
Finding and figuring out how to upload from continually evolving free , to begin with, sites is a pain and beyond some of us not so computer savvy old farts.

I hope there will be a solution to the photo hosting problem we have here, the way it works now is a big deterrent for people who want to post pictures which are vital for technical repairs and such. Can't there be one premium Photobucket account to hold all the photos? May as well fix the site's problems completely instead of just a partial fix. Many of our members have been lost to Facebook, ugh.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaximPhil

Bikerphil,
I totally agree we need pictures for the Technical discussions.
Ride reports are greatly enhanced with pictures too.
Finding and figuring out how to upload from continually evolving free , to begin with, sites is a pain and beyond some of us not so computer savvy old farts.

Phil

That sure would be wonderful. Up until about 2013 the sites content was mainly XS11. Fixing 11's. Riding 11's. Q&A about how to best tackle any work on XS11. and with the great pics. Ask a question, post a pic and normally have a GURU respond with an answer within an hour or two. Then others add tips and pointers and their btdt advise. Since then content has degraded considerably as more 11's got parked. Loosing PB was bad. Hassle of adding new members was bad. Of late, .com more a social site than anything else. Hopefully the site upgrade and investigating things as mentioned will help breath some life back into 11.com as an 11 owners resource.

Also have to admit i'm an offender. Posting ride reports and things about 'other bike'. Posting HD's and Wing going to Louisiana Rodeo etc. Interesting, but probably should be posting that stuff in another place. Do have a bunch of 11 LD trips in there too. But do have some non-11 stuff there too.

The excessive non-11 content has made it difficult to maneuver. Threads get hijacked etc. Photo posting capability would sure enhance things. Then we need a photo cop to whack the non-11 content to keep TB storage & traffic in check. I'm glad TC & JP are taking this on and that so many XSives have contributed $$ to make it a reality.

It is always great to have new folks interested in xs11's show up at a rally or on .com